Tasty morsel of a story for you this sunny Friday – see you at the Berkeley! New short story by Mike McDonough For my mum’s birthday, I got her an Alexander McQueen dress, a Fendi handbag and shoes by Christian Louboutin. She found the dress delicious, the handbag divine and the sparkly stilettos literally mouth-watering. … Continue reading →

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/..The relevance of dress, from the Introduction to English Costume 1066-1830 by Dion Clayton Calthrop, Adam and Charles Black, 1950../

As the fig-leaf identifies Adam, so may the chaperon twisted into a cockscomb mark Richard II. As the curled and scented hair of Alcibiades occurs to our mind, so shall Beau Nash manage his clouded cane.
Elizabeth shall be helped to the memory by her Picadilly ruff; square Henry VIII by his broad-toed shoes and his little flat cap; Anne Boleyn by her black satin nightdress; James be called up as padded trucks; Maximilian as puffs and slashes; D'Orsay by the curve of his hat; Tennyson as a dingy brigand; Gladstone as a collar; and even more recent examples, as the Whistlerian lock and the Burns blue suit.
And what romantic incidents may we not hang upon our clothes line! The cloak of Samuel Pepys ('Dapper Dick', as he signed himself to a certain lady) sheltering four ladies from the rain; Sir Walter Raleigh spreading his cloak over the mud to protect the shoes of that great humorist Elizabeth I never think of her apart from the saying, 'Ginger for pluck'); Mary, Queen of Scots, ordering false attires of hair during her captivity - all these scenes clinched into reality by the knowledge of the dress proper to them.

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